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Valuing a Blog

Posted By Darren Rowse 19th of December 2007 Miscellaneous Blog Tips 0 Comments

Duff McDonald of Portfolio.com writes a piece on the Valuation of Drudge Report and tries to come up with a valuation based upon three methods (eyeballs, ad value and ‘ask his mother what it’s worth’).

Somewhere between it all they value it at between $10M-$20M.

About Darren Rowse
Darren Rowse is the founder and editor of ProBlogger Blog Tips and Digital Photography School. Learn more about him here and connect with him on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
Comments
  1. I sold a blog this past summer for $12/post.

  2. I am going right now to check out what are they talking about.

  3. How much would you personally value your blog on Darren?

  4. These valuations bug me…

    First, ComScore claims only 1.3 million uniques, but Drudge’s stats show 10milion… ComScore consistently under-guesses the total visitors for sites… because they mostly just take a survey to figure out an audience.

    In the age of computers, logfiles, and well… google analytics, it seems like we could do better than a survey to determine the number of visitors a site has. Even if you cut the logfile numbers in half assuming that people browse from work and home, there is still a 4 million visitor difference in those numbers.

    Also, more so than almost any other blog… Drudgereport would be worth very little without Drudge himself. People only go to the site for the scoops that they can trust him to dig up from his underworldly sources. Without him, people would not come back… and since it’s a single page, it’s not like he’s getting loads of traffic from a plethora of articles already written.

  5. @John – priceless ;-)

  6. I don’t really know how they value blogs. I know how they value businesses, based on their balance, goodwill etc….

    Is there anything like a standard rule set for valuing sites and so on ?

  7. Ouch, that’s a big chunk of dollars right there…..but of course the blog is worthless without the writer seeing as his style of writing and content is what’s keeping the readers coming back..

  8. wild flux says: 12/19/2007 at 10:57 am

    How come I don’t normally see his blog listed in the top blogs articles normally posted on the net? (Especially considering how many hits he gets daily).

  9. wild flux says: 12/19/2007 at 11:02 am

    Herm, the numbers listed in that article are different from his webpage —

    VISITS TO DRUDGE 12/19/07

    018,768,804 IN PAST 24 HOURS
    464,463,701 IN PAST 31 DAYS
    5,017,516,023 IN PAST YEAR

    The article says —

    How many people read Drudge? Internet-traffic measurer ComScore counts 1.33 million unique visitors a month.

    So, which one do we go with?

    (I’m new to blogging so if this is an obvious questions forgive me!)

  10. Maybe he would sell it and then stay on as a contributing writer? Isn’t that what most entrepreneurs do, build a brand with customer loyalty and then sell it? My blog is priceless. Heck, who am I kidding. I might give it up for a chicken plate if I were hungry enough.

  11. I agree with Mathew, blogs have worth but it has to have the writer. It would be like buying an awesome sports team, but loosing the key player/coaches in the process. Is there a way to evaluate the price of a blog without the key writers/contributors?

  12. I have a hard time classifying Drudge as a blogger or the Drudge Report as a blog; at least not in the modern sense of the words. There’s very little original material and, when he does write something, it’s on a reusable URL, e.g. flash1.html, flash2html, etc.

    What Drudge does, while generating incredible traffic, should not be conflated with blogging.

    And, for what it’s worth, I’d trust his self-published numbers over ComScore’s evaluation.

  13. Someday my blog will be worth more than a pretty penny!

  14. For Sale: Combination Blog/Website. Like new. Only used 4 months. Will consider any reasonable offer. Only serious inquires please.

  15. Ever thought of how much value it would hold about a month after a sale? If people can’t see their favourite blogger blogging on their website, why would they come? I wouldn’t be surprised to see it lose at least a third if the same quality of blogging wasn’t met in the eyes of the audience.

    Reminds me of how smart the guys whom bought Devlounge were. They bought it with the thought of keeping their logo there whilst the original bloggers just kept strong at what they were doing in the first place.

    See, if Darren left, it would need either someone as motivated as he to keep this going, or a team with a combined effort to keep the multiple numbers of blogs coming in every day… mind you i’m sure that many of these blogs are written at least a week beforehand so if needed a day can be taken off, but it’s still impressive from the eyes of his readers…. isn’t it guys? :P

  16. Darren,

    As you know I sold my blog for $20, 000 recently and I was shocked how differently the buyer valued it to me.

    I always thought it was a 12 times monthly earnings type of thing but they were MUCH more interested in the brand I’d established and so on.

    Interesting.

  17. Personally I’d never give up a blog to sell. I like to see my work in my own control and have the ability to command what I started. Just my 2 cents.

  18. That figure seems a little inflated.

  19. The funny thing about website valuations is that small websites that are being soled at Digital Point and SitePoint typically sell for 8-12x monthly earnings. But the big sites that get valued or sold in the hundreds of millions or, in the case of Facebook, billions of dollars range are not profitable at all!

    I find this paradox very interesting.

  20. Darshana says: 12/19/2007 at 10:04 pm

    What stuck me as the only true valuation is the final analysis about it been worthless without Drudge himself. Something that I believe is true for most great blogs like problogger. Although the visitors add value, without the unique content provided by the particular individual that may disappear in front of your eyes. This is especially true for blogs on personal views.

  21. I recently sold a blog at the value of the posts + the theme.
    I am not sure whether this means everything though :O

  22. What’s the question here? How much is it worth to whom? It’s worth a certain amount to Drudge himself, but for someone else to buy it, they’d have to value it far less because of the risk of losing the key writer.

    I don’t know how these things work, but even if Drudge stayed on as a contributing writer, wouldn’t the quality be likely to suffer? And why would he want to sell if he still had to write?

  23. I’m curious to know that if you were willing to sell a blog, would you still be willing to work on it? I think that I might.. then again I’m not considering selling any of my blogs…

  24. To me there are so many factors built up around a blog and what the buyer is interested in using it for you almost have to take it on a case by case basis. Don’t let anyone try to sell you this in a bottle.

  25. What is eyeballs? Don’t know.

  26. Isn’t it somewhat limiting to value a site in purely economic terms? I’d go as far as to say that Darren’s blogs are invaluable…

  27. the value of the blogs domain name come into play, and there are so many other things…..but drudgereport, to me, should be worth more than 10 to 20 Million, at least if people are talkin about digg bein’ worth $300M!

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